“Dry – this smells like sour grapes!
Hot this is a mellower black tea base with a bit of fruitiness to it. There is also a hint of smoke that combats the fruit notes but somehow...”
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From Upton Tea Imports

A premium blend of Ceylon and China teas, with the flavor of grapefruit, bergamot, and other citrus fruit. Popular in Europe, this Russian-style blend is recommended for an interesting departure from traditional Earl Grey.

33 Tasting Notes

Between this and your earlier note I just had to see if I had gotten a sample of this when I ordered more Black Dragon. NO! :( I really should get to my Upton samples so that I can see if there’s another tea that I want to get more of, and then I can order some of this too :)

It is so good. I didn’t think I would enjoy it so much because I’ve been pretty scared of trying anything smoky. This is very lightly smoky, almost just the idea of the taste of smoke, but it is there and I think that it is making me want to try other smoky teas in the future.

I was a little concerned when I first read on this tea, as it is a “Russian” Earl Grey – and that typically communicates to me “smoky.” But, after smelling the tea I could detect no strong smoky scent – a slight smokiness, yes, but, not a strong smoky scent – I decided to go ahead and brew some and give it a try.

I’m glad I did! This is delightful. As the company description reads on this tea – it’s a departure from traditional earl grey. I can taste the grapefruit notes, which are in perfect harmony with the bergamot! The slight smoky scent translates into the brewed liquor as well, but again, it is not a strong, smoky flavor.

Pleasantly robust with a bright, vigorous flavor – this would be an excellent tea for one of those mornings that I’d rather not be awake, but have to be! (Kind of like this morning was! haha) A dry astringency to the tea, but not unpleasantly so.

I did not brew it as long as the steeping suggestions recommend – and I’m glad I didn’t. I feel that at 2 1/2 minutes, this tea is strong and flavorful, but, I fear that at 5 minutes I would have had a bitter tasting cup.

This is one that I would consider buying – but you know what? It’s not one that I would have considered buying before this tasting. I MUST get over my predisposition to automatically dismiss a Russian blend. Russian blends are good!

I love grapefruit, but it’s hard to find a truly grapefruity tea that isn’t overly bitter or too much like orange or lemon. Upton’s Summer Blend was close, but not quite there—Dylan recommend that I try this one (which happily enough I’d already ordered a sample of), which I finally remembered when digging through my samples. All those Upton ones packaged for Batman are on the very bottom of the bin!

This should be called “Earl Grapefruit.” It’s BAMPOWGRAPEFRUIT, right up in your face. Tangy, bitter, acidic, sooooo good. I mean, good if you like grapefruit, since it’s kind of an acquired taste. My bf looks at me in horror when I chug glasses of it, but hey, more for me! Saint Isaac is like grapefruit juice with some tea thrown in—you get the base which is pretty strong, bright, and brisk, but the beginning and end of the sip are grapefruit all the way. I am in total tea-love with this, and there’s enough left in my sample to try it a few different ways still. I think this will be delicious iced!

EDIT: Apparently by trying it iced later I meant right now! It’s actually not quite as good iced and loses some of that graprefuity goodness, but it’s still tasty. In the future though I’ll brew this hot.

My new teapot from Upton arrived this morning (I shall call him Colin). It’s one of the 4-cup Chatsford Bone China (on-sale!) pots that I’d been eyeballing for over a month — so I’m thinking that it’s fate that Tim was mortally wounded (Tim’s now chilling on one of my bedside tables right next to my Wonder Woman lunchbox — every now-and-then he gets to wear the cozy Doulton made just for fun).

Anywho, since I was ordering from Upton I naturally had to get a few samples (I’m so weak). I held myself to the three that were on my shopping list. And this is the one with which I decided to christen Colin.

I could very much smell the bergamot when I opened the packet, but it was almost a woodsy bergamot. After steeping it’s a lot more woodsy than bergamotty. It’s a pleasant, innoffensive cup of black tea. The description mentions grapefruit — I get no grapefruit. Maybe in the distant aftertaste, but I’m not a fan of grapefruit so this is a good thing.

Overall it’s a decent breakfast tea, but I don’t plan on buying more of this. NE

Finished off my sample of this for my morning tea . Of course, I say morning but since it was the weekend it was more like eleven or so. Mmmm, weekend. It was pretty much down to this and the blue flower for what I wanted more of and, while this is good and interesting and nice, I think I like the blue flower bette for tasting how I want an Earl Grey to taste.

Laying in bed, sneaking in my last reviews of the night using my tablet.

Ordered this one on a whim from Upton. There are really a lot of things I will try for a one or two dollar sample, and a billion different Earl Grey blends definitely qualify.

I’m not sure if my nose is just getting more sensitive, but this is another in a growing list of teas that has really smelled overpowering straight out of the bag. It’s a little odd, considering the number of jokes that my sister and I have historically made about my poor sense of smell.

Long story short, the grapefruit smell of this tea was quite strong.

And so was the grapefruit flavor! I’m not sure if St. Isaac was the patron saint of grapefruit or not, but that is where he is going to live in my head. This tea is very strong in it’s grapefruityness, with only a shred of lemony other citrus at the end of the sip. The tea aftertaste was very smooth, with a light malt, but I’m definitely not tasting any smoke.

This isn’t a bad tea, but it isn’t going to find much of a place in my tea closet. Citrus teas seem to be done much better by about every other citrus than grapefruit, so I’ll stick with one (or all!) of those.

Preparation

This has to be the only Earl grey type tea I can’t taste the bergamot inx. I found lots of grapefruit and a malty medium bodied base. I didn’t get the lime I was looking for. I also totally missed the smoke I thought I’d find in here. Not a bad tea, but not one I’m wanting to stock up on.

This is the first EG in a big batch of EG samples from Upton Tea Imports. (I ordered 22 different teas, over half of which are EGs!) I’m not the biggest EG fan (though I do like it) but the husband is (I blame Star Trek TNG), so the purpose of this endeavor is to find him a go-to, must-have EG to keep on hand. And bonus points if I like it a lot, too.

Taken with sugar and whole milk, this tea reminds me of last week’s Twining’s Lady Ear Grey – fairly soft with a more lemony taste than straight bergamot. The one thing I missed in the Lady EG was the actual tea taste (which I attribute to the teabag being old) but this one fixes that problem. The tea base is nicely noticeable, though it doesn’t scream a particular tea type – bolder than the typical Ceylon, not rich as the typical Yunnan… it makes total sense that this is a Ceylon/Chinese black blend because that is what it tastes like. While the base isn’t overly special, it is nice to have a tea base that tastes obviously tea-like but not overly Ceylon.

The flavoring and overall tone of the tea is soft and relaxing – not a harsh EG at all, but not so soft that it is girlie frou-frou either. There’s a little prickle to the tea that is either astringency or a little roughness to the tea base taste. And even though it doesn’t taste like a bold wake-up tea, the caffeine level is enough to make me perkier than I justifiably should be.

I like this one a little more than Twining’s Lady EG simply by virtue of having a more noticeable tea base (though I reserve the right to adjust that ruling if I ever get the chance to have some fresher (and hopefully more tea-tasting) Lady EG). It’s probably not the smoothest EG I hope to find but it’s nice and very drinkable so I would have no problems adding this one to the regular tea rotation (if this one ends up getting the husband’s vote for ‘must-have’ EG).